Tom's Mad Blog
February 16th, 2009 | Posted in General
As I mentioned the other day I am extremely busy right now, and trying to keep any meaningful content on the blog is difficult. I thought I might, under these very occasional circumstances, take a page out of my friend Cedric Hohnstadt‘s book and do a little something called “Reblogging”. Cedric does (or did) that every so often. After being in existence for a long time, a blog will have a lot of back content that is buried so deep no one will ever see it unless they specifically search for it… and if they don’t know it’s there they can’t do that, can they?… READ MORE
February 15th, 2009 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: When you get a job, are you usually given reference photos to work from or are you expected to have your own resources? (Assuming the subject in question is famous, not just Joe From Accounting.) For a job where the reference photo is not provided, where do find your references? Do you have a clip file of particularly nice, interesting photos that you clip from magazines? Do you ever freeze a video image from a movie or TV show to get a reference? A: Since these questions all deal with reference I thought I’d answer them all at one time. When you get a… READ MORE
February 14th, 2009 | Posted in General
A few Sundays ago I worked at my Nickelodeon Universe location with fellow illustrator James Hungaski, which is something I haven’t done much of for a long time but likely will be doing a lot more often… especially this summer. I was going to bring a camera and snap pics of some of the lives ones I did but I just didn’t have the energy. I did do this one from a couple of pictures in between customers, which I mailed out to the subjects (a couple of friends from Nevada). They wanted a Batman/Catwoman theme. Not much too it… I was plenty rusty Sunday.… READ MORE
February 13th, 2009 | Posted in News
I just made plans to attend WonderCon in San Francisco from Feb. 27th through March 1st. I’ll be have several scheduled appearances at the “Super Capers” movie booth where I will be signing copies of the film’s promotional comic book as well as possibly at the DC Comics exhibit. I will have a bunch of original art for sale from MAD and I might be drawing some live caricatures as well. Emphasis on the “might” as I am not sure I’ll have the room or will be able to drag a drawing board setup with me. Hopefully I will also have some copies of MAD… READ MORE
February 13th, 2009 | Posted in News
MSNBC reports about a criminal case in Pennsylvania involving two judges who allegedly accepted over 2.6 million dollars in kickbacks for sentencing minors to dentention/correctional facilities, including a girl who’s crime was creating a parody of her vice principal. Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy My God. If drawing caricatures of your high school’s authority figures was punishable by jailtime, I’d be in permanent solitary confinement right next to Hannibal Lecter in some dungeon somewhere. The young lady in the story and video created a parody MySpace page that lampooned her high school’s vice principal. For that she got… READ MORE
February 12th, 2009 | Posted in On the Drawing Board
Here’s what I’ve got on the board right now: Supercapers Comic Book– 13 page full color promo comic for the movie I did illustration work on. I was given two weeks to get this done, which is almost impossible so I am collaborating with my friend and ace comic book artist/inker Tom Nguyen on it. I’m doing the penciling, color and all design/layout while Tom is inking most of the book with me inking the caricatured faces and some other detail work. It’s been a long time since anyone else has inked my work, so this should be fun to see. Tom is one of… READ MORE
February 11th, 2009 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
This week’s subject is the late, great Paul Newman. When Newman passed away last year it occured to The Lovely Anna and I that we had never seen many of the movies that made him famous and were heralded as high points of his career. I had seen “Cool Hand Luke” a few times,¬¨‚Ć “Slap Shot” (one of the greatest sports movies of all time) and a few other Newman films from the 80’s on, but not many of his older movies.¬¨‚Ć So, we made it a point to rent some of his classics. “The Sting” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” were the… READ MORE
February 10th, 2009 | Posted in General
Right now I am deeply immersed in trying to kick out a 13 page full color promotional comic book that is to be given away as a promo item for the movie “Super Capers”. I did a bunch of illustration work for the film, which will appear during the opening credits and in a flashback scene near the beginning of the movie. The movie will debut in select theaters on March 20th, and if sells a predetermined number of tickets it will get picked up by a major distributor (there is a deal in place) and will be shown in about 2000 theaters this summer.… READ MORE
